Portugal: Europe's best-kept foodie secret

By Paul Ames, for CNN

Updated 5:01 AM ET, Fri July 8, 2016

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A gastronomic guide to Portugal – From the freshest seafood to its golden olive oil, Portuguese food may be the most underrated cuisine in Europe. Even better, the seaside nation boasts a wide range of wines to go with its dishes.

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Going with the grain – For a nation that consumes the most rice in Europe, Portugual's arroz is unjustly neglected.

Belcanto – Avillez's Lisbon restaurant Belcanto is the first in Portugal to be awarded two Michelin stars.

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Liquid gold – Less famed than other European counterparts, Portugal produces many award-winning olive oils.

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Saintly sardines – During sardine season (May to October), whiffs of sardine-grilling can be detected at many Portuguese events. Outside the season, they're best sampled from a can.

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Say queijo – Some of the best cheeses (or queijo) in Portugal include amarelo da Beira Baixa -- a herby goat-and-sheep-milk mix that was once judged the world's greatest cheese -- and the creamy Serra da Estrela from the milk of ewes.

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Pastel de nata – The cinnamon-sprinkled custard tarts invented by monks in Lisbon's Belem district may be the country's most iconic pastries.

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Nata's rivals – Nata asides, there is more to Portuguese pastries than just custard tarts.

Old-school food – Just about every provincial town has a least one old-school restaurant cooking time-honored dishes unique to their region. The Solar Bragancano offers seasonal partridge, pheasant and boar dishes that make a trip to Braganca worthwhile.

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Porto's tasty trinity – It may not sound like it, but the combination of tripes, white beans, calves' feet, pigs' ears and peppery chourico tastes divine.

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Old-school food – Just about every provincial town has a least one old-school restaurant cooking time-honored dishes unique to their region. The Solar Bragancano offers seasonal partridge, pheasant and boar dishes that make a trip to Braganca worthwhile.

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(CNN)Portuguese cuisine rarely travels well.

The cooking of mainland Europe's westernmost country is deeply rooted in the freshest local ingredients.

2. Liquid gold

Drive the backroads of the Alentejo, Beira Interior and Tras-os-Montes regions and you'll weave through endless olive groves.

Olive oil is the basis of Portuguese cooking, whether it's used to slow-cook salt-cod, dribbled into soups or simply soaked up with hot-from-the-oven bread.

Exports have quadrupled over the past decade as the world wakes up to the quality of Portugal's liquid gold, either from big-time producers like Gallo and Oliveira da Serra, or hand-crafted, single-farm oils.

3. The national boiled dinner

Portugal's cooking is rigorously regional: meaty and robust in the north, Mediterranean in the south.

Yet one dish unites the country: cozido.

Best eaten as a big family lunch, this is a boiled one-pot featuring a hunk of beef, various piggy bits, sometimes chicken, always cabbage, potatoes, carrots, turnips and an array of sausage, including paprika-spiced chourico and cumin-flavored blood pudding.

There are regional variations: in the Algarve they add chickpeas and mint; expect lamb and pumpkin in the Alentejo, sweet potatoes on Madeira.

In the Azores islands, cozido is slow-cooked by volcano in underground pits.

4. Lisbon's gourmet awakening

A new generation of chefs is shaking up the capital's restaurant scene with ultra-modern takes on gastronomic tradition.

Rivals include Henrique Sa Pessoa's new Alma restaurant, just round the corner and wowing diners with the likes of hake with burnt leek and hazelnuts; or Joao Rodrigues, voted chef-of-the-year with his riverside Feitoria.

5. King cod

They say Portugal has 365 recipes for cooking salt cod.

In fact there are many more.

Bacalhau is served "a bras" with scrambled eggs, olives and fries; as fish cakes (pasteis de bacalhau) alongside black-eyed-peas; barbequed, oven-baked or simply boiled with cabbage and carrots, then drizzled in olive oil.

Crumbled with cornbread in the university city of Coimbra, baked under mayonnaise Ze-do-Pipo-style in Porto, chopped into a favorite Lisbon salad with chickpeas and onion, bacalhau is always close to the Portuguese soul.

Such dairy delights may be served as appetizers or after a meal with red wine or port, sometimes accompanied with quince jam (marmelada).

7. Porto's tasty trinity

In the 15th century, patriotic Porto donated all its meat to Prince Henry the Navigator to feed his soldiers when they sailed off to do battle in Morocco.

Left with just offal, they concocted a dish which remains the city's signature: tripas a moda do Porto.

It's not for the faint-hearted: a stew of butter beans, calves' feet, pigs' ears and peppery chourico as well as the tripe -- the chewy white lining of cow's stomach.

Ever since, inhabitants of Portugal's second city have been known as tripeiros -- tripe-eaters.

Porto's other best-known dishes: slices of deep-fried octopus and monster meat sandwiches smothered in spicy sauce and named francesinhas -- or little French girls.

8. Going with the grain

The Portuguese are Europe's biggest rice-eaters, outpacing Spaniards and Italians, but while paella and risotto are globally ubiquitous, Portugal's arroz dishes are unjustly neglected.

Arroz de marisco is sumptuous: sloppy rice cooked in a garlicky, cilantro-infused tomato sauce fortified with a multitude of shellfish, which can include lobster, crab, clams and shrimp.

You can taste top-notch versions at Cantinho do Mar in seaside Praia da Vieira de Leiria; O Faroleiro overlooking the spectacular Guincho beach in Cascais; or Marisqueira Rui in Silves, the old Moorish capital of the Algarve.

9. Wild pigs

Portugal enjoys some of the world's juiciest pork and tastiest ham as a by-product of its thriving cork industry.

Semi-wild black pigs grow fat on a diet of acorns dropped by the forests of cork oaks across the southern Alentejo region.

The resultant porco preto is marbled with fat, filled with flavor.

Cured ham (presunto) made from these beasts -- especially from the border town of Barrancos -- rivals the best from Spain or Italy.

The Alentejo's most distinctive dish combines clams with garlic-and-red-pepper-marinated pork.

10. The old school

Just about every provincial town has a least one old-school restaurant cooking time-honored dishes unique to their region.

Examples: Porto Santana serving vinegary dogfish soup in the whitewashed town of Alcacer do Sal; Cafe Correia famed for stuffed squid in Vila do Bispo; Aveiro's O Telheiro and its eel stew; the Solar Bragancano whose seasonal partridge, pheasant and boar dishes make a trip to Braganca worthwhile.

Portuguese towns also have a bunch of informal restaurant categories: tascas are wine taverns serving hearty lunches; cervejarias are for seafood and chilled beer; pastelarias are nominally pastry shops, but also serve lunchtime dishes.

Solar Bragancano, Praca de Sae, 34, Braganca 5300 Portugal;

11. So much wine

Whether you like it dry or fruity, you can drink it in Portugal.

For a small country Portugal makes an astounding variety of great wines.

Summery vinho verdes from the green northwest.

Full-bodied reds and fruity whites from Douro, Dao and Alentejo.

Bubbly from Bairrada; legendary Port and Madeira vintages.

Honeyed moscatel from Setubal.

Rare tipples from odd places like the Lisbon surfer suburb of Carcavelos.

Or the World Heritage vineyards clinging to a mid-Atlantic volcano on Pico Island.